


The Most Exasperating Man in London

by apidologist



Category: Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms, Sherlock Holmes - Arthur Conan Doyle
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-04-25
Updated: 2015-04-25
Packaged: 2018-03-25 18:02:46
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,075
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3819799
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/apidologist/pseuds/apidologist
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sherlock Holmes can be an extremely trying man at times. Watson decides to vent his frustrations in writing, and leaves them for Holmes to find.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Most Exasperating Man in London

**Author's Note:**

> Written for thesmallhobbit for the Autumn 2013 Holmesfest.

Sherlock Holmes awakened at an unusually late hour, blinking at the sun streaming through the window curtains. He stepped into his slippers, blearily struggled into his dressing gown, and pushed open the bedroom door, in search of some form of sustenance, or at least a cigarette.

The first thing he noticed was that Watson had left recently, the odour of his tobacco still hung in the air, but his coat was off its hook and there was no sign of the man. The second thing he observed was a distinct lack of breakfast to be found, which was perhaps not too strange after one o’clock. The third (and most interesting) thing he perceived was an envelope on Watson’s desk, unsealed, with a small sheaf of papers folded inside. Seeing no name or address, he removed the enclosed pages, lit a cigarette, and began to read…

 

***

  
My dear friend Sherlock Holmes is a man of many talents and skills, and I would be at fault to suggest in any manner that these, or his friendship with me, are ever left unappreciated or unnoticed. However, as I have suggested in many of my writings, the man can be a positively exasperating companion, and I could almost regard him as the most exasperating man in London, if not for his more redeeming qualities.

In examining this idea further, it has occurred to me after many years of assisting Holmes with cases and accompanying him on countless adventures that there are some very particular and recurring habits of his that I feel obliged to address. Indeed, the ones upon which I will expound in this document all took place in fewer than twenty-four hours, within the short duration of a recent case that held little interest for Holmes’ deductive faculties in the end, but that happened to unite five of his more provoking proclivities into a coalescent set of anecdotes.

Holmes had been busy with his task of docketing various papers and letters into some semblance of order, and I had allowed a long list of errands to accumulate throughout the previous week. I set out early and managed to complete them after a weary day of traipsing from one end of London to the other, and returned to Baker Street just in time for supper. The sudden autumnal chill combined with such a great deal of walking sufficed to stiffen my old leg and tire me more than usual, so after reading for an hour or two in my friend’s company and the warmth of the fire, I turned in early and quickly dropped off to sleep.

I jolted awake sometime in the wee hours feeling rather unsettled. I lit the candle on the nightstand, poured a glass of water from the jug, and was about to bring it to my lips when I caught a slight movement of something, or someone, at the very edge of my periphery. It was Sherlock Holmes, sitting cross-legged at the foot of my bed as though he’d been there all night.

I gave a shout of surprise and the glass slipped from my hand to shatter on the floor, water soaking into the floorboards as Holmes regarded me with amusement.

“Why, Watson, look at the mess you’ve made.”

“Holmes!” I spluttered furiously, heart still racing from the shock of finding one more person occupying my bed than when I’d fallen asleep.

“In all seriousness, I require your assistance this morning.”

“Are you sure it _is_ morning?”

He brushed my disgruntlement aside. “There’s a train we must catch in half an hour, but if you dress quickly there’s some tea and toast in the sitting room for us. Well? The game’s afoot, my dear fellow, it won’t do to lie around in bed all day!” And with that he energetically hopped to his feet, practically skipping out the door. All day, indeed. It couldn’t be long past four.

“In that much of a hurry and you _stare_ me awake! You could have knocked – you could have called my name, or shook my shoulder, or done any number of things besides–” I continued to grumble long after he’d left the room.

The second annoyance came about not ten minutes after we had set off on our long journey. We had settled in with coffee and newspapers, and now that the rush to prepare and find our train was done with, my curiosity was beginning to get the better of me.

“Well, Holmes? Would you care to enlighten me as to why you’ve dragged me onto a train at this unreasonable time of night, or morning, or whatever you care to call it?” (I tried to lend a tone of testiness to my voice in an attempt to coax some guilt out of him for waking me up at such an hour, but my excitement was too great.)

He took a letter from the breast pocket of his jacket and handed it to me without speaking.

I read it twice over in silence, then looked up at Holmes in confusion. “I realise it’s entirely possible that I’m missing something of great importance, Holmes, but this all sounds rather straightforward to me.”

“Indeed, Watson. Not one for the record-books, I’m afraid. It could develop some points of interest, but…no, strike that, if it isn’t a complex case, it could only benefit from your floridly romantic additions.”

“Do we have to have this conversation again? The majority of these crimes have romance at the centre of them, and one must do justice to the atmosphere of the scene–”

“Why must the scene have an atmosphere? Why is it a scene? You refer to it as though every crime is a drama unfolding before your eyes, instead of a logic puzzle, a series of clues from which I can make inferences!”

“There are elements of both, and I try to give the proper attention to both the inherent dramatic aspect of every crime and to your deductive faculties!” 

“As long as your attempts include such lurid sentimentalism, I cannot credit them as successes.”

“And I suppose you believe it would be very easy, do you, to write something about these cases that would give _The Science of Deduction_ its due consideration and hold the public’s attention for longer than a passing glance at a shop window?”

“Whoever said I wanted the _public’s_ attention, Watson? I only want an audience who will fully appreciate and learn from my methods.”

Public, indeed. More like his future clients. Whatever happened to “I’d be lost without my Boswell?” I did not wish to continue the argument, and fell into a moody silence, sipping my coffee carefully as we jolted along the tracks.

The third nuisance directly followed the second – as I stared out the window at the passing scenery, sullenly refusing to meet Holmes’ eyes after being thus insulted, he rested his feet on the seat beside me, lit his pipe, and began to puff away with a look of concentration knitting his brow. The smell of his tobacco, I admit, has grown on me, and I have even found it to be a familiar source of comfort during our long acquaintance, but in an enclosed train compartment it is not the pleasantest of things.  
  
Now, I won’t mention those other substances he was wont to use in past years, as it gives me great pride to say he has quitted these destructive habits (though whether in self-preservation or to appease his doctor, I couldn’t possibly say) in favour of the slightly less toxic forms of self-poisoning through an even more excessive intake of coffee and tobacco. But when self-poisoning turns to the poisoning of an entire train compartment, I must draw a line.

I had been sleeping lightly for about an hour after our little dispute, and awakened, coughing and only barely able to see the man across from me through the thick cloud of smoke which continued to issue from his pipe. I brought my sleeve to my mouth and stood to open the door of the compartment in the hopes of finding some more breathable air, but in my hurry had forgotten that Holmes’ feet were propped on the seat cushion, and slammed against the door, only just managing to get my legs under me and avoiding a fall. With a mumbled oath into my sleeve, which I rather hoped Holmes heard through his badly-concealed laughter, I opened the door at last and stood outside, allowing the heavy fumes to drift along the carriage. It’s still quite surprising to me that our fellow passengers didn’t start panicking and taking up cries of “fire!” but it was a very early train after all, so possibly no one was sharing our carriage, nor my extreme discontentment.

Unfortunately, I didn't have the time to favour Holmes with any chastisements. Just as I re-entered our compartment and opened my mouth to berate him, we screeched to a halt at our destination, and had to gather our luggage quickly or run the risk of missing our stop.

Nothing of great interest happened during the morning, I am sorry to relate, nor well into the afternoon. The local police, for once, had easily identified the criminal and merely required Holmes’ services in order to get a confession out of the man. Holmes was absolutely secretive about my role in the case, or what he proposed to do in the final stage of his investigations, in order to finally capture the culprit (an entirely different, but just as bad, habit to which he was prone, though I must keep from elaborating further in this particular document, or will certainly run out of ink).

At about half past three, as the police were closely examining a rather dusty and disorganised stack of records, Holmes whispered into my ear: “Must be off. Keep the authorities occupied and meet me at the Beehive in precisely one hour.”

“The what? Whose beehive?”

“ _The_ Beehive, Watson, the public house just down the road!” And with that, he slipped away, leaving me to hastily come up with an excuse for his absence.

I arrived at the pub with a few minutes to spare, and seeing no sign of Holmes, approached the bar to order some kind of repast as I waited. As I sat down, an old man with very worn clothing, dirty spectacles, and thick side-whiskers stumbled in, hardly able to keep his balance. To my dismay, he pushed his way through to the bar towards me, and nearly elbowed me off my seat as he leaned in to order a drink.

“I beg your pardon, sir!”

“Oh, come on, old chap, you can’t be worried about a little dirt on your clothes?”

“I say, don’t you think that’s rather familiar, sir?”

“You think so? Why, Watson, you never told me!” The old man removed his grimy spectacles to wink at me, and sure enough, I perceived the keen grey eyes of Sherlock Holmes peering out from beneath a pair of bushy grey eyebrows. 

“Holmes!” He coughed into a ragged handkerchief to conceal my gasp of recognition, and began to talk very rapidly, hardly moving his mouth as he spoke.

“I’ve spent the last hour at the local theatre, trying to put together a believable costume – I’m afraid they thought me quite the eccentric, paying them to use their wigs and wardrobe for my own amusement – but I’ll soon explain everything. Just stay here, and observe the man at the table in the corner very closely, but do try not to appear so conspicuous.” He coughed again, very loudly, and made his way slowly to the corner table, tripping over chair legs and sloshing beer over the side of his glass and onto the laps of various patrons as he went.

In short, after letting me make a fool of myself (which I sometimes believe to be his greatest form of entertainment) Holmes somehow used this disguise to secure a sample of our suspect’s handwriting, and after revealing both his own identity and the criminal’s mistake, allowed two policemen to remove him to the nearest cell. For this, Holmes received a round of applause from everyone who witnessed the scene, and gave a small bow, still holding the wig, false whiskers, and spectacles in one hand. (It might have been endearing, if not for the look of immense self-satisfaction on his face, though I, too, confess to joining in the applause.)

As Holmes sat down with the inspector to enlighten him as to how he obtained this final piece of evidence which served to justify our perpetrator’s imprisonment, I found an empty barstool and scribbled notes, struggling to keep up with Holmes’ rapid explanations.

In the end, even with my supposed ‘talent for fabrication,’ I knew I couldn’t fashion such a case into anything worth reading – for all my optimism, and despite Holmes’ fantastic disguise at the close of the case, each supposed point of interest led unsatisfactorily into another blind alley. We made our way back to the station and sat together on a bench as we awaited the next train into London, where I was to be subjected to yet another Holmesian irritant that day.

“I hope this wasn’t too dull an errand for you, Watson?”

“No, I am always pleased to accompany you,” I said reflexively, thinking of the trials he’d put me through during the course of the day.

“Perhaps – that is, if you are not too tired from the day’s exertions – we could clean up a bit and have dinner, and I believe there’s an opera on tonight, if you wish to join me.”

“Oh, that’s what it was! I was going to tell you yesterday but it slipped my mind completely; there’s a show at the Savoy which I’m rather keen on seeing as well!”

“Ah, I might be growing rather sleepy after all, old chap…” He yawned exaggeratedly.

“Why is it that every time I propose to attend something other than one of your dreary old operas – something properly entertaining, a comic play, or an operetta, if we may compromise, you regard it as a complete impossibility?”

“You must admit, Watson, there’s not much contest between them.”

“I have no trouble admitting _that_.”

We were at a standstill. Holmes inspected his fingernails with false scrutiny, clearly leaving it for me to carry on with my fruitless argument. I had no intention of giving in this time, but after a short moment of reflection, I realised that his offer of dinner and a show initially had the slightest ring of apology to it, and reluctantly gave in, as ever. After our return journey, I followed Holmes back to Baker Street for a change of clothes before departing once more.

Surprisingly, the dinner was very enjoyable, as Holmes seemed to have finally reached his capacity for aggravation (a lucky thing, as I had long since exceeded my capacity for being aggravated). I even managed to enjoy some of the opera – at least, those few acts I didn't sleep through completely.

And now, Holmes, I’ll address you directly, since I know you could never leave a mysterious-looking envelope alone, even if it happened to be sitting on my own writing desk (though I suppose you couldn't leave it alone if it were torn in pieces and thrown in the fireplace). I swore I’d never make another list of your attributes, and I don’t believe this breaks the promise. I fully intend to use these observations as parts of narratives for other cases, or perhaps if I ever publish a proper biography in my old age instead of these “overly sentimental efforts” they will turn out to be very useful.

With hopes that you found this at least slightly more educational than amusing,

\- JHW

 

***

 

Holmes chuckled to himself as he flipped through Watson’s pages of reflections once more. He then went back to his room, took something from a box on top of his wardrobe, and slipped it along with the pieces of paper into the envelope. He scratched “for my dear Watson” in cramped writing on the front, then quickly lit a candle and dripped wax over the reverse, sealed it, and centred it on the writing desk.

Hours later, Holmes had found something to eat at last, and was lazily perusing the Times surrounded by a haze of smoke when Watson came through the door.

“I trust you had a pleasant afterno– Holmes, could you at _least_ open a window if you’re going to pollute the room with that foul stuff you insist on contaminating your lungs with!”

“Oh, I thought you liked it.”

Watson narrowed his eyes at Holmes, who was doing a very poor job of keeping that dreadfully smug look off his face.

“Ah, so you did read it. You didn’t pay very close attention, then. Or you’re using the thing as a way of making an even bigger nuisance of yourself than usual.”

“I’m certain you said you liked it, that you’d grown fond of it.”

“Yes, but then I went on to say – very well, if you don’t believe me, I’ll read it back to you myself.” Watson walked over to his writing desk and took up the letter triumphantly, but his expression immediately changed to one of confusion as his eyes fell on the seal Holmes had made. “I say, Holmes, isn’t this yours?”

“Turn it over.”

“And it’s addressed…to me?”

“Fancy that. I’m sure we’d all be fascinated to learn what’s inside.”

Watson broke the seal, grumbling. He gingerly removed the small stack of papers from within, and gasped when a pair of tickets fluttered down to the carpet. “Tickets!” His eyes lit up as he picked them up to read the small print. “Why, Holmes!”

“Yes yes, tickets, to see one of those perfectly awful operettas you’re always blathering about. I purchased them weeks ago, but had no holiday or occasion to use as an excuse. I’m glad you’ve enabled me with the opportunity of presenting them to you.”

“Holmes, I don’t know what to say! And a private box, too – how can I express my thanks?”

“Your companionship will suffice to repay me, old fellow. Though, I would be most gratified if you decided to publish a complete account of your complaints. ‘Sherlock Holmes: Most Exasperating Man in London.’ Doesn’t that have a wonderful ring to it?”

Watson snorted. “As I said: absolutely _insufferable_.”


End file.
